Cliff's Notes Illustrated

Here's this series of pages I did back in the mid 1980s. The idea was to take ponderous works of literature and modernize and miniaturize them. So the great white whale became the Big Bee, the crown of England became a coin, and the hordes of Greece became a little league team. And I tried here and there to explicate the meanings of the works, as found in the Cliff's Notes.

The first four ran in a zine called nada. The fifth one didn't see print until they were collected in Acme Comics #10 in 1994. That anthology can still be purchased from The Squid Works.

The artwork is a bit naive and punkish, but I think it succeeds on its own terms. Click on these images and they should finally appear big enough to comfortably read.


Cliff Notes Faust


Mo Bee


The Complete Works of Shakespeare


Wagner's "Ring of the Nibelung" cycle of operas


The Iliad and The Odyssey


Thank you for your time.